AN UNSELFISH MOTHER.
All the parties given by Mr. Grey at the Manor House were men's parties.
Mrs. Grey rarely or never was to be found in the drawing-room after
dinner; and, indeed, the drawing-room was seldom lighted up.
Mrs. Grey was a pretty, low-sized, dark-eyed, nervous woman, a few years
the junior of her husband. He had met her first in London, in a house
where she was staying on a visit with friends. She was alone in the
world, had a small fortune, which, while it made her no object of
pursuit in the circle she frequented, kept her independent.
There was a little mystery and a little doubt about her, and while
neither the mystery nor the doubt was sufficient to disquiet anyone, it
served to keep interest in her alive, and the more prudent and
calculating of suitors from love-making. Individually she was popular;
but while those who knew her spoke well of her in her absence, the good
things said of her always began in superlatives, and, as the
conversation went on, diminished to positives, and the talk usually
ended with a vague "but" and an unfinished sentence.
Perhaps she was a little odd, they said. Perhaps she had French blood in
her veins. Perhaps the strange blood was Spanish. She had a look not
wholly English--a look denoting no close kinship with any other people.
Her name was Muir, which seemed to indicate that she came of a stock
north of the Tweed. Yet she had never been in Scotland, nor her father
before her, nor anyone of his side, as far as he could trace back. Her
mother had been the daughter of a Truro solicitor, her father a member
of the Equity bar of London. Those who had known her father and mother
declared that she resembled neither in her face nor her manner. She was
dark, low-sized, and odd; they had both been tall, fair, and models of
conventional insipidity.
When Henry Walter Grey married Miss Muir she was twenty-four years of
age, he twenty-nine. The women judged her to be thirty-four, the men
allowed that she might be twenty-seven; but all agreed that young Grey,
with his prospects, might have done much better as far as money went.
But among the young and the chivalric of Daneford, young Grey helped
forward his nascent popularity by marrying a poor wife and risking his
father's displeasure for his sweetheart's sake. The young and chivalric
of Daneford were never tired of pointing to the pleasantest and most
prosperous man in the city as one who had made his love paramount above
all other considerations in the selection of a wife.
From the time he won his wife until he lost her his manner towards her
gained him daily increase of respect among the people of the city. Every
indulgence and luxury which his position could afford were lavished upon
her. Wives who had cause of displeasure or dissatisfaction with their
husbands always cited Mr. Grey as a shining contrast to their own too
economical or exacting lords. It was not alone that she was never denied
anything for which she could reasonably care, but, notwithstanding the
clubs and the institutions and the boards of which Mr. Grey was a
member, no more domestic man lived in Daneford. He always dined at home,
except on occasions of great public interest; and when he had no guests
he sat reading or conversing with her, or they both went for a stroll in
the fine twilight, or visited the theatre, or any other form of public
amusement afforded by the town.
As the years of their married life glided by, and no child came to make
an endearing interruption to the smooth course of wedded sweethearts,
the attachment between the husband and wife seemed to borrow a greater
depth from the soft melancholy arising out of their childless condition.
It was, the town said, a thousand pities the rich, amiable, amusing,
good-looking Wat Grey had no one to leave his fine business and his vast
fortune to.
If a friend alluded to the fact of his childlessness he always put the
subject aside with as little humour and as much gentleness as the
character of the speaker allowed of. To his wife, who often made tearful
allusions to the circumstance, he replied with cheerful hopefulness, and
bade her set her grief for him away, as he was quite content and happy
with the blessings Heaven had already sent him, chief among which was a
wife he loved.
Although Mrs. Grey did not go into society, and had no ladies to dinner,
she had a few visiting friends upon whom she called in turn, and who
learned from her the uniform kindliness of her husband, and the great
gentleness with which he accepted the absence of an heir or heiress.
In fact, the more people heard of Mr. Grey, the more he grew in popular
esteem, and behind all this amiability on his part there was a factor
which hugely multiplied its value. At first, when he brought his wife
home to Daneford, and the people of his set began to know her a little,
they all declared that she was pretty, very pretty, and a trifle odd.
Time went on, and although she lost none of her prettiness with her
years--hers being the beauty that depends on bone and outline, and not
on surface and colour--her peculiarities gained upon her; and whether,
the Daneford folk said, it was the foreign blood that darkened her eyes
and her hair and her ways, or a slight strain of madness, they could not
decide, but she was, beyond all doubt, not in manner like the average
English-woman of her class.
At first her peculiarities defied definition. People said she was very
nice, but a little queer, cracked, crazy. She was very impulsive, and
sometimes incoherent. No action of hers seemed the result of forethought
or preparation. She ordered the servants to bring this, that, or the
other thing, and when they came with it she told them they might take it
away again, as she had changed her mind. She ordered the brougham for
four, went out walking at a quarter to four, and stayed out till six,
without countermanding the brougham.
About the time that Mr. Grey bought the Manor House, Mrs. Grey had a
difference with her cook, and her cook left her in a violent temper. The
cook had been with her ever since Mrs. Grey had first come to Daneford,
and was the confidential servant of her mistress. Soon after the cook
had left it reached the ears of a few acquaintances of Mr. Grey that a
dreadful spectre had appeared in his household. The fact that Mrs. Grey
had now been married some years and was still childless had preyed very
deeply on her excitable temperament, and, dreadful to say, she not
unfrequently took more wine than was good for her.
Those who heard this now saw a reason, unguessed by others, why the
banker bought that odious house swathed round with that fearful wood.
There his wife would be secluded, free from prying eyes and guarded
against any close daily contact with neighbours. How had it been kept
secret so long? The cook, now discharged, had obtained for the unhappy
woman what she wanted, and the poor lady was wonderfully discreet and
cautious, and until that servant went no one but the cook and the
afflicted husband ever dreamed of such a thing. It was dreadful.
But the most intimate friend of Grey never knew from him, by even the
faintest hint, there was a single cloud over his domestic happiness.
He always spoke of his wife in terms of the most tender consideration
and kindliness. He was by no means weak or uxorious; but there was a
loyal trust, an ever-active sympathy in him towards her, that won
greatly on the young and old men and women of Daneford.
The evil circumstance under which Mrs. Grey laboured was never an open
scandal in the town. In the first place, owing to her own great prudence
and circumspection, no one had any suspicion of the melancholy fact from
herself. If she was the victim of a debasing weakness, she never
betrayed herself publicly, and those who heard of it through indirect
ways had kept the secret closely, out of respect to the man whose fame
and name and popularity stood so high among his fellow-citizens. Indeed,
some who heard the rumour disbelieved it wholly, and declared their
conviction that it was the malicious invention of a discharged servant,
based on the eccentric habits and unfamiliar ways of the poor lady.
But the fact remained that, even to the spacious Manor House, no lady
guests were invited to dinner; no lady guests stayed for twenty-four
hours; and, beyond a few afternoon callers, no ladies visited the house
at all. But perhaps in Daneford there were not a dozen families in
possession of the fact that would account for the strict retirement in
which the mistress of the Manor lived, and the young and the chivalric
continued to look on Grey and his wife as not only the most prosperous,
but also the most happy, couple in the whole county.
Very soon after Henry Grey's marriage with Miss Muir, he found out that
she did not possess the solid good sense and grave discernment essential
in the confidant of a banker.
She not only lacked the golden faculty of silence, but dealt with facts
communicated to her in a most imaginative and injudicious manner. He
told her that a substantial and solvent merchant of the town had
overdrawn his account five hundred pounds. Shortly after, the merchant's
wife called on Mrs. Grey, and the latter, in a moment of
communicativeness, said to the former that business was in a bad way,
and that she understood the former's husband owed the Bank, over and
above ordinary business, no less a sum than five thousand pounds. The
merchant's wife related this to her husband, and he came in great
indignation to Grey. Mr. Grey said his wife's talk had been only woman's
gossip, and that he had most certainly never told his wife or any one
else the merchant owed the Bank five thousand pounds over-draught.
The merchant said he was quite sure Mr. Grey had not, but urged that
something of the over-draught must have been communicated to Mrs. Grey,
and that a woman's gossip was quite capable of ruining a solvent man.
On another occasion the banker told her the Bank had not made as much
money that year as the year before, and she informed some chance callers
that the Bank was losing heavily. This rumour might have shaken the
credit of an institution less solidly established than the Daneford
Bank; but in the city and country surrounding the city the Bank was
looked upon as much more safe than the Bank of England, insomuch as the
Threadneedle Street concern had a paper currency, and the Daneford did
not mortgage any of its capital by such an issue, and stood in no
temptation to diminish its stock of gold or overstep safety.
These two experiences of Grey's, coupled with a few others of less
importance but similar nature, convinced him that the more general and
abstract his statements of business matters to his wife the better, and
from the moment he arrived at this conclusion he carried it into effect.
She, having no talent for the particular, did not seem to miss his
confidence, and remained perfectly content with commonplace generalities
as to business matters. Indeed, having very little of the highly
feminine virtue of inquisitiveness, she was not much interested in
business statements of any kind.
Most men will talk more freely to a woman whom they trust than to any
man, no matter how near to them by ties of nature or affection. Henry
Grey was no exception to the rule, and when he found he durst no longer
confide important secrets to his wife, he unburdened himself to another
woman, a widow, now past seventy, but still straight and intelligent,
and sympathetic and hale, a woman who had won and retained a most
powerful hold upon his esteem, affection, and confidence--his mother.
Whilst all the world of Daneford was calculating the enormous fortune
the Daneford Bank must be making for its owner, and was bemoaning the
fact that Wat Grey had no child to leave his fine business and his vast
savings to, there were two people the nature of whose anxiety about Mr.
Grey's affairs did not take the same course.
These two people were the only beings possessing knowledge of the
condition of Mr. Grey's private fortune and the bank.
For years he had kept the true state of affairs from his mother, but at
length, as blow succeeded blow, he could no longer bear the burden of
his secret, and he unfolded it to her. He did not trouble her with
detail, but informed her briefly that he had backed the South in the
American wars--that not only had he lost all his own private fortune,
but of the depositors' money as well.
At first she was overwhelmed with surprise and horror to think the
splendid business and reputation made for the Bank by her dead husband
and his father before him should be ruined by her son, and that not only
had the Bank been ruined and her son's fortune and position destroyed,
but the moneys of the clients had also been included in the horrible
disaster.
But, despite her seventy years, she was a brave old lady, full of honour
and spirits and courage. Once the first shock was over, she set all her
faculties at work to try and sustain the drooping energies of her only
son.
She know he was not free from troubles at home; she knew he gave none
of his business confidences to his wife. Though she deplored these
facts, she felt there was no help for them; and if at first reluctant to
assist him in councils which ought to be held between him and his wife,
in the end she saw it would be the wisest course for her to listen, to
encourage him to speak, and to aid him with any advice she might think
it wise to give.
Apparently, however, the affairs of the Bank were beyond the aid of
advice. At every interview between mother and son he assured her he saw
no opening in the clouds; that, in fact, they got blacker and blacker as
time wore on.
Towards the beginning of 1866 things had, the son told the mother, come
to the worst.
"All is lost," he said; "all is lost. I have been staving off and
staving off until everything has got into a hopeless tangle, out of
which I can find but one thing--ruin!"
"Then, Henry, I suppose you must shut the door; and as you see nothing
else for it, the sooner you stop up the better."
"Mother, the day I shut the Bank door I'll open another door."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll open the door into the other world with a charge of gunpowder."
"Don't say such a foolish, dreadful thing! You are not, I hope, such a
coward as to fly from the consequences of your own act. If you have lost
the money in fair trading you need not be ashamed to meet them all;
others beside you lost by that unfortunate South. Your father would have
stood his ground and faced the city," said the old woman, with spirit
and pride.
"No doubt, mother, no doubt my father would have had the manliness to
stand and face the break; but he was a man of great endurance and nerve;
you know I am not. I would do anything rather than meet such a crash and
live after it. You know I have been much more out in the world than my
father. I am mixed up with such a number of things, am closely connected
with such a number of institutions and men, that nothing, no
consideration, could induce me to outlive bankruptcy. The people would
not believe facts; they would not credit any statement, however plain,
that I was insolvent. They would say that I had appropriated the money
of the depositors, made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, and
concealed the money for my own use. I know the world better than you,
mother; I know the world, and what it would say. I may be popular now;
but if I fell, the street-boys might kick me through the gutter and no
one would take my part, or try to get me fair play."
He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.
The old woman looked at him with a sad sympathy, which was not wholly
destitute of reproach.
"You know, Henry, thousands of men have had to face such things, and
have come out of their difficulties without a stain or a hard word----"
"In my case that is impossible. I tell you, mother, they would have no
more mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank is a private one, the
property of one person, and on that one person all the wrath would fall.
It is not like a joint stock, or a limited liability, where many are
concerned as principals or shareholders or directors. It would be a case
between an individual and his creditors. It would look as if I had
borrowed money privately of all the people I knew, and spent it or
gambled in dangerous foreign speculations, until I had dissipated their
last pennies and left the people beggars. No, mother; the day I shut the
Bank door I open the gate of Eternity with a bullet."
He was walking up and down his mother's drawing-room, with his hands
clasped behind his coat, his eyes bent on the ground, and a look of
concentrated thought upon his usually placid and beaming features.
"I will not hear you say that again, Henry," cried the mother, stamping
her foot impatiently on the floor. "Listen to me. You know my two
thousand a year is clear of the Bank----"
"Thank Heaven and my father for that!" cried Grey earnestly.
"Can't you shut up the Bank, and you and Bee"--Beatrice, his wife--"come
and stay with me for a while? We could leave England and live on a
thousand a year in the south of France, or anywhere you like, and save
up a thousand a year to start you again----"
"I would die ten thousand deaths, dear mother, rather than touch your
money," he cried fervently, catching her hand and holding it in both
his, and opening his hands now and then to kiss the shrivelled hand
which had once, when soft and full, joined his--then softer and
fuller--in prayer, and now, when he was strong and she was weak, tried
to shield and succour him as in the days when he was a little child.
"Don't be sentimental at such a crisis," cried his mother petulantly.
"You shall do as I say; or if you like, when the Bank affair is settled,
we can sell the annuity. I know I'm old, and it's not worth many years'
purchase; but we should get a few thousand for it, and that would give
you a fresh start in some other business. Now I tell you this is what
_shall_ happen. Do you hear me? I will not wait for your consent; this
very day I will see about selling the annuity--what do you call it?
capitalising it? Go, Henry, and no more nonsense about gunpowder and
bullets. Such things are only fit for the stage or the Continent, and
are quite beneath the notice of a sensible English man of business."
He rose to his feet and cried: "You shall not, you must not, mother. I
have been making out things worse than they really are. I am depressed
and ill. Believe me, there is no need for doing what you say. There is
one venture of mine, in no way connected with the late war, the greatest
of all my ventures; and although I do not look on it as a very safe or
sound venture, it may come all right yet. I shall know in a fortnight.
You must promise me to do nothing until then. Promise me, my dear
mother!"
He spoke eagerly, passionately; and as he uttered the final words he
caught both her hands in his, and looked beseechingly into her eyes.
"And in a fortnight you will tell me?" she asked, looking searchingly
into his face.
"In a fortnight I will tell you."
"And between this and then you will not, in my presence or in your own
secret mind, speak or think about such nonsense as daggers or
poison-bowls, or gunpowder or bullets?" she asked scornfully.
"I promise I will not."
"Very well," she said; "I will do nothing till I hear from you at the
end of a fortnight. Let us shake hands, Henry, and part friends."
"Friends!" he exclaimed, as tears of love and sorrow came into his
eyes. "Mother, you are the only one on earth I love now."
"Hush, sir! How dare you say such a thing!"
"I swear it!" he cried vehemently. "I would do anything, dare anything,
for you, mother----"
"And for your wife," she added, as if reminding him of an omission made
in carelessness.
He paid no attention to her suggestion.
"You are the only one in the world who knows me really."
"And longest," she added, with a bright smile. "There--go now, Henry;
this scene is growing theatrical or Continental, and unbecoming the
drawing-room of an English mother. There--go."
And she hustled him to the door, opened the door, thrust him out, and
closed the door upon him.
As soon as she was sure he had left the vicinity of the door she threw
herself down on a couch and burst into tears, exclaiming softly to
herself between the sobs:
"My Wat! my poor Wat! my darling child, is it come to this with you?"
Then after a while she dried her eyes and sat up. "Perhaps all may go
well with him after all. Perhaps this venture of his may come right. It
was lucky I got him out of the room so soon. Another moment and I should
have broken down, and been more dramatic and Continental than he, and
that would never do. No son respects or relies on a mother who weeps on
his bosom, and causes him to remember she is not his earliest and
strongest friend."
In the strong-room of the Daneford Bank all the money and securities
held by the bank were kept. The last duty of Mr. Aldridge, manager of
the Daneford Bank, each day, was to return the cash, bills, books, &c.,
to this strong-room. To this strong-room there were three keys in the
possession of the staff of the bank, one held by the manager, one by the
accountant, and one by the teller.
The door could not be opened save by the aid of the three keys. Thus no
officer of the Bank could commit a larceny in the strong-room without
the countenance of two others.
Mr. Grey had duplicates of the keys held by the accountant and teller.
But the key held by the manager was unique, and even Mr. Grey himself
could not enter the strong-room without the manager's key.
In this strong-room were kept not only the valuables of the bank, but
cases and chests containing all kinds of highly portable and extremely
precious substances and papers belonging to customers of the Bank. Here
were iron plate-chests, iron deed-boxes, jewel-caskets in great numbers,
left for safe keeping, not being part of the Bank's property, and
against which there was no charge by the Bank but an almost nominal one
for storage.
The evening after Mr. Grey had that interview with his mother, he called
at the Bank, found the manager in, and having told Mr. Aldridge that a
secret report had reached him to the disadvantage of a customer whose
name he was not allowed to disclose, he wished to borrow the manager's
key for half an hour, as he wanted to turn over the suspected man's
account.
He got the key and a candle, and went down to the strong-room. In half
an hour he returned, and handing back the key to Mr. Aldridge, said: "I
am glad to say that the account I spoke of is quite satisfactory, and
that it will not be necessary to make any alteration in our dealings
with the customer I alluded to."
The next day Mr. Grey went to London, and returned the evening after. A
few days later, among the letters was an advice from Mr. Grey's London
correspondents to the effect that Messrs. Barrington, Ware, & Duncan had
lodged twenty thousand pounds with them to Mr. Grey's credit.
That day Mr. Grey called upon his mother, and told her some of the
expected good luck had come--not all, but still twenty thousand out of
the fire.
"I told you, Henry, you had only to wait and face it, and you would win.
If you did any of those romantic and foolish things with daggers and
poison-bowls, they would say you were little better than a thief."
"Now they could not even say as much," he said softly to himself.
"What _are_ you dreaming about now!" his mother cried, in exasperation.
He looked up with one of his best and brightest smiles, and said:
"Dreams, madam! nay, it is. I know not dreams;" and kissing his mother
to punctuate his parody, he smiled again, and added: "I was only joking,
just to enjoy the sight of your anger now that things are looking
better. Good-bye."
And so he left her.